DISPATCHES 

1919-1921 



HAROLD PHELPS STOKES 





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Book 



PRESENTED BY 



DISPATCHES, 1919-1921 

BY 

Harold Phelps Stokes 



GREENWICH, CONNECTICUT 

PRIVATELY PRINTED 
1922 






COPYRIGHT, I9I9, I92O, I92I 

NEW YORK EVENING POST, INC. 

REPRINTED BY PERMISSION 



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CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Balance Sheet of the Peace 5 

II. President Wilson on a Picnic ... 14 

III. In the Hall of Mirrors 21 

IV. New Year's Eve, 1919 26 

V. Al Smith at San Francisco .... 36 

VI. President Harding's Inaugural . . 43 

VII. Hughes at the Arms Conference . ^3 

VIII. France at the Arms Conference . 60 



I 



THE BALANCE SHEET OF 
THE PEACE 

{The draft treaty was handed to the Germans on May 7, igig) 

Paris, May 26. — The reaction to the terms of 
the Peace Treaty with Germany among the inter- 
nationally minded here doubtless follows much the 
same lines as in America. Politico-Social Second 
Adventists who climbed up on the housetops ready 
to jump off into the millennium the moment peace 
was signed naturally are chagrined to discover that 
they put on their white robes in vain. 

A larger group, having held no such high hopes, 
finds itself embittered by no such disillusionment. 
Like the hymn writer, they do not ask to see the 
distant scene — one step is enough for them. They 
welcome the peace, not as bringing perfection at all, 
or even all they had hoped for, but at least as 
bringing progress, and promise of further progress 
under a growing League of Nations. 

Millenniumists of the type of Bullitt, head of the 
much-discussed mission to Lenine, whose letter of 
resignation from the staff of the American commis- 
sion has been published, decry the peace as a 
patchwork, imperialistic affair; a ** peace without 
security. " Such complaints have been made famil- 

5 



6 DISPATCHES, 1919-1921 

iar enough to all in attendance at the Peace 
Conference the past fortnight in the comments of 
the British Labor Party, the diatribes of the French 
Socialists, the resolutions adopted by the Women's 
Congress in Zurich, and the laments of such liberal 
organs as the London Nation. The League is a 
union of governments, not of peoples, they say; 
and while a punitive peace is being arranged a 
dozen wars are going on in different parts of the 
world. 

It was to all these folks, I fancy, and not merely 
to a dinner-tableful of listening lawyers that 
President Wilson spoke, the night after the peace 
terms were published, when he declared at a 
meeting of the Paris International Law Society: 

"One of the things that have disturbed me most 
in recent months is the unqualified hope men enter- 
tain everywhere of immediate emancipation from 
the things that have hampered and oppressed 
them. You cannot in human experience rush into 
the light. You have to go through the twilight into 
the broadening day before noon comes, and the 
full sun shines upon the landscape. We must set 
out to see that those who hope are not disappointed 
by showing them the processes by which hope must 
be realized, the processes of law, the processes of 
slow disentanglement from many things that 
bound us in the past. You cannot throw off the 
habits of the individual immediately. They must 



THE BALANCE SHEET OF THE PEACE 7 

be slowly got rid of, or, rather, they must be slowly 
altered. They must be slowly adapted. They must 
be slowly shaped to new ends for which we would 
use them." 

To counsel patience is one way of dealing with 
these millenniumists. Another is to set down in 
black and white a balance sheet of accomplish- 
ments. Each individual and every newspaper 
editor must, of course, make his own balance sheet 
of this peace, and doubtless many readers of the 
Evening Post will radically dissent from the one 
that follows, which has been made up after two 
weeks of listening to the debate pro and con — in 
the public press of Great Britain and the Conti- 
nent, in the Clemenceau and Rantzau notes, and 
in the lobby of the Hotel Crillon: 

Assets 

Peace in the West. 

The League of Nations. 

Disarmament of Germany now; reduction of ar- 
maments for the rest of the world eventually. 

All international disputes to be submitted to ar- 
bitration or inquiry. 

Three months' breathing spell before nations 
resort to war. 

Secret treaties abolished. 

The German military power crushed. 



8 DISPATCHES, 1919-1921 

Alsace-Lorraine returned to France. 

The restoration of Belgium contracted for. 

Justice for France assured. 

Reparation for the Allies. 

Poland set up as an independent state. 

Jugo-Slavia and Czecho-Slovakia established as 
new nations. 

The principle of internationalization recognized 
in the case of Danzig. 

Protection of American interests. 

The mandatory system for the colonies. 

Labor given its due: labor conferences, the eight- 
hour day. 

Under the League of Nations, the peace becomes 
a dynamic settlement, differing from all the static 
settlements of the past. 

Liabilities 

A dozen wars in the East. 

A heritage of hate for Germany. 

A heritage of jealousies and rivalries for the 
Allies. 

The League of Nations weak. 

The League at the outset more a union of gov- 
ernments than of peoples. 

The Anglo-American agreement to come to the 
aid of France in case of an attack by Germany is 
contrary to President Wilson's declaration that 
*' there can be no leagues or alliances or special cov- 



THE BALANCE SHEET OF THE PEACE 9 

enants and understandings within the general and 
common family of the League of Nations." 

The peace has not yet relieved the world of the 
burden of armaments, of the willingness to resort 
recklessly to the arbitrament of the sword, or of 
the doctrine of the divine right of kultur. 

Open covenants of peace have not been openly 
arrived at. 

The principle of self-determination of peoples is 
violated, in fact if not in form, by the Saar Settle- 
ment and by the provision for forced Austrian 
independence. 

The peace has not solved the Russian problem 
or dealt with Bolshevism. 

The Monroe Doctrine clause in the covenant 
is likely to be a prolific trouble-maker for the 
League, in so far as it sanctions such ''regional 
understandings" generally. 

The economic and reparation terms of the 
treaty are severe to the point where they may 
prove impracticable. 

The colonies have been handled arbitrarily. 

Neither conference nor treaty has given much 
evidence that Clemenceau, Pichon, Orlando, and 
the rest of the ruling statesmen of Europe are gen- 
uinely converted to the new order in international 
affairs heralded by Wilson. 

Everybody here has cast up some sort of a bal- 



lO DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 92 1 

ance like the above, and nobody has found the 
result absolutely to his liking; often, in the case of 
different groups or individuals, for diametrically 
opposite reasons. The French Socialists consider 
the economic terms too severe. The French Depu- 
ties think they are not severe enough. Frank Si- 
monds sees in the Danzig settlement ''the seed of 
future war," because the city is not given outright 
to the Poles. The radicals see in the Danzig settle- 
ment the very same seed, because the city was 
taken away from the Germans. 

To most of the newspaper correspondents here 
the terms came as a good deal of a surprise. 

"Even the most bloodthirsty of us were stag- 
gered when we read them," said one of them to 
Mr. White at a morning conference a week ago. 

The remark appears worth quoting as coming 
from one of the best informed correspondents 
here, who represents what the man in the street 
might name as the most reactionary New York 
newspaper. It is certain that, especially in the mat- 
ter of economics and reparations. President Wil- 
son had a hard fight to persuade some of the rest of 
the Allies that, to put the matter on the ground of 
enlightened self-interest alone, dead geese find it 
hard to lay golden eggs. The question whether 
justice or vindictiveness dominates the resulting 
economic settlement is much debated. 

Clemenceau came forcefully to the defence of 



THE BALANCE SHEET OF THE PEACE 1 1 

the terms in the recent note, which points out that 
the shortage of raw materials and shipping and 
the economic crisis which Germany faces are 
hardships which "arise not from the conditions of 
peace, but from the acts of those who provoked 
and prolonged the war." One other consideration 
not mentioned in the note, although there is rea- 
son to believe it was included in its original 
draft, is the fact that great discretion in the mat- 
ter of reparation payments is left in the hands of 
the proposed Inter-Allied Reparations Commis- 
sion, which will be in a position constantly to feel 
the pulse of Germany's economic life. 

The cynics point at the Poles trusting still to 
the arbitrament of the sword in Galicia, at the 
Jugo-Slavs and Austrians sniping at each other, 
at a dozen or more wars going on in various parts 
of the world in defiance of the conference, and ask, 
"Where is the peace?" The answer is: "In west- 
ern Europe and America." With the settlement 
announced, and with the United States, Great 
Britain, and France settling down to the ways of 
peace, statesmen now gathered in Paris believe 
that the rest of the world must gradually follow 
suit. 

A like answer may be made to those who com- 
plain that the conference has not done away with 
the nationalistic rivalries of the Allies, has not 
been able to prevent the controversy over Fiume 



12 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 92 1 

from becoming acute, has not availed to wipe cov- 
etousness from the eyes of foreign ministers gaz- 
ing lustfully upon the dismembered Turkish Em- 
pire. With the final settlement once effected, the 
various countries will no longer have their atten- 
tion fixed so exclusively on rival "revindications." 
There will be less squabbling, it is hoped, when the 
loot is all divided up. 

Yet it is generally conceded here that this failure 
of the international spirit to prevail at the Peace 
Conference is the most lamentable item on the 
whole debit side of the ledger. Only those in daily 
attendance at the conference can fully appreciate 
how little reliance the present-day ruling states- 
men and diplomats of Europe really place on the 
League of Nations, how cynical most of them are 
at the prospect of introducing any genuine new 
order into international affairs, how bound up they 
are in such principles of international conduct as 
were enunciated in the secret treaty of London. 

If there be any who believe that the doctrine of 
the divine right of kultur was killed November 1 1 
last, let them ponder these words of Signor Luz- 
zatti, ex-Premier of Italy, in speaking recently to 
an Associated Press correspondent: 

*'It is true that there are in Dalmatia some 
places where Jugo-Slavs and Italians are mixed, 
but it is evident that the most ancient and higher 
civilization should prevail." 



THE BALANCE SHEET OF THE PEACE 13 

And that in a country where ''the most ancient 
and higher civiHzation" represents less than 5 
per cent of the total population ! 

Yet in spite of all these grounds for disappoint- 
ment there are only a few internationally minded 
people about the Conference today who, faced with 
some such balance sheet as that given above, are 
hardy enough to cry out that the peace is wholly 
a hollow peace, or that President Wilson com- 
pletely failed in peace to realize those ideals for 
which he plunged the country into war. The rest 
hold that at least he has given expression and 
leadership to the international spirit, and has 
provided a mechanism through which those who 
come after can make that spirit prevail. 



II 



PRESIDENT WILSON ON A PICNIC 

{While waiting for the Germans to sign. President Wilson took a 
trip to Belgium with King Albert) 

Brussels, June 19. — I have just come back from 
a tour of Belgium with the President, and this is 
going to be a story of the trip — but mostly it 
will be about kings and queens and picnics and 
pirates. Kisses are even going to figure in it mildly, 
but, let me hasten to add, entirely decorously, and 
even such irrelevant matters may be discussed as 
the influence of Parisian taxicab drivers on inter- 
national relations. 

It was the hottest sort of a day when the Presi- 
dent and Mrs. Wilson set out on their tour of Bel- 
gium. King Albert and Queen Elizabeth motored 
over to Adinkerke from La Panne to meet them. 
La Panne is the little place on the seashore where 
Belgian headquarters was during the war. The 
Queen kept house for the King in a cottage there 
in those days. They were frequently bombed, 
especially at meal times, and when the bombs 
landed too near the royal piazza the Queen would 
pick up the plates on a tray and carry them across 
the street to another cottage where they could 

14 



PRESIDENT WILSON ON A PICNIC 15 

finish their fish in peace. At least that's what 
Commander Baker tells me, and he was up there 
with Hoover and ought to know. 

This time the royal pair flew down to La Panne 
from Brussels in an aeroplane the night before — 
just casually, like that. The King enjoys travelling 
around that way in an aeroplane and pouncing 
down somewhere, all unexpected. It gives him a 
chance to dodge secret service men and autograph 
hunters and journalists. 

On the station platform a little girl came up and 
offered a bouquet of flowers to the Queen. The 
Queen motioned her graciously to Mrs. Wilson. 
Mrs. Wilson took the flowers and kissed the little 
girl. To-night, when Brand Whitlock came down 
to the station to say good-by to the President, he 
kissed the Queen's hand. I mention these two 
incidents because they were the only expressions I 
happened to see throughout the trip of that habit 
of constant public osculation which forms so nota- 
ble a part of Continental life, but which with us, 
so far as public life is concerned, is so largely 
limited to the intercourse between candidates and 
babies. 

Around the station platform — to go back to 
Adinkerke— clustered local inhabitants and school 
children with Belgian flags to wave at the illus- 
trious visitors. When the King and Queen and the 
President appeared the children "pushed little 



l6 DISPATCHES, 1919-1921 

cries of joy," and the old folks, again to trans- 
literate the Brussels newspapers, which carried 
yards about all this last night, ''raised discreet 
vivats." Before climbing into the automobile the 
President "disembarrasses himself promptly of his 
official tunic, coifs himself with a casket gray, 
envelops himself in a dust-hider of brown duck." 
No wonder the ''casket gray" dumfounded the 
local journalists. How Admiral Grayson ever 
came to pick out such a monstrosity for his chief as 
that cap fairly staggers credulity. It was a vast 
affair, topheavy, floppy, falling down about the 
Presidential ears like Harry Lauder's tam o'Shan- 
ter. 

It seems very hard to get the President started, 
at least in this yarn, but he did finally get away, 
and motored through miles of ruined villages, 
winding trenches and discreet vivats to Zeebrugge. 
But that's getting way ahead of the story. The 
first stop was Nieuport, where the Belgians held 
the sluices at all costs so that they could keep the 
Germans flooded and miserable. Here the Burgo- 
master, or town councillor or whatever his title is, 
being ninety-four years of age, was too old to be 
out in the sun, so a couple of young fellows about 
seventy-five did the honors in his place. Also 
Queen Elizabeth jumped up on a sand dune and 
took a snapshot of the King pointing out the 
sights to the President. Of course all the more 



PRESIDENT WILSON ON A PICNIC 17 

official but less majestic photographers made a 
bee-line for the next sand dune to get a snapshot 
of the Queen taking a snapshot of the King point- 
ing out the sights to the President. That picture 
ought to be worth a million dollars to some 
camera firm. 

The Queen was all the time doing things like 
that. She's the most queenly queen, and at the 
same time the least queeniferous queen, that I 
ever saw — ''perfectly genuine, perfectly delight- 
ful," as the President put it in drinking a toast to 
the royal pair at lunch to-day. Just as you usually 
think of a king as a bored individual interminably 
sending congratulatory telegrams to equally bored 
fellow monarchs on their birthdays, and diverting 
himself in the interim by tickling court ladies with 
a billiard cue, so you invariably think of a queen as 
continuously opening puffy bazaars, and taking a 
morbid delight in it. Queen Elizabeth may open a 
bazaar once in a while, but I'm sure she doesn't 
enjoy it. She isn't the bazaar-and-garden-party 
type. She's just a simple, democratic, queenly, 
charming person to whom the whole Presidential 
party, including Vance McCormick, completely 
lost their heart. 

It is said that a much beloved sovereign once 
attended a charity bazaar and asked a very emi- 
nent lady, until that time a court favorite, for a 
cup of tea. ''How much do I owe you?" or words 



1 8 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 921 

to that effect the King inquired as the lady poured 
out a cup for him. "It's ordinarily a shilling," 
she replied, and, touching the cup to her lips, 
added: **Now it's a guinea." Without a word the 
King took out his purse, handed over a sovereign 
and a shilling, and then said quietly, **Now please 
give me a clean cup." King Albert never would 
have thought of that. If he had he probably never 
would have said it. Nor has he probably ever 
poked a lady in the ribs with a billiard cue. He 
might have laughed heartily, however, if he saw 
some other monarch do it, say on a house party. 
But he himself isn't built along just those lines. 
He's just a fine, frank upstanding King, who tow- 
ered way above President Wilson and his ridiculous 
cap, who must have looked to the down-glancing 
kingly eye for all the world like Artemus Ward's 
** Great Panjandrum Himself, with the Little 
Round Button at Top." 

Between them the King and Queen had fixed up 
a picnic party for the President in the woods of 
Houthulst. I don't ever remember hearing of the 
President going on a picnic party before, and I 
doubt if they're just his style. But like a good 
sport he went into this one plainly determined to 
enjoy it at all costs, let the crumbs fall where they 
may. Being a man of great stubbornness, he 
doubtless succeeded. 

The table was spread alluringly in the cool of 



PRESIDENT WILSON ON A PICNIC 19 

what was left of the shell-swept forest and there 
arose from various stewing and steaming forest 
cookeries an aroma enticing in the extreme to a 
gaunt circle of American newspaper correspond- 
ents, who hovered about looking hungry like 
little nations at the Peace Conference. Driven to 
desperation by watching all this eating going on 
and not being able to do any of it themselves, the 
correspondents hied them to an utterly ruined 
village where there was a ramshackle hut con- 
taining a Flander or two, a couple of Walloons, 
some picture postcards and a big bowl of soup. One 
of the Flanders, or whatever you call the inhabit- 
ants of these parts, spoke English like a native 
and dug out some strawberries. 



The President seemed to be a lot impressed with 
Zeebrugge, as well he might be, for how the men 
of the Vindictive ever swarmed up over the 
top of that mole in their famous landing party is a 
marvel. Capt. Carpenter of the Vindictive was on 
hand to tell all about it, while the President, lis- 
tening, gazed out over the ocean toward America 
and Congress with an air of rapt but dreamy defi- 
ance. I wonder what he was thinking about. 
Some said he was probably dreaming of some great 
sea fight of old, some boarding party in pirate 
days. If he was, I have a notion that at the head of 



20 DISPATCHES, 191 9-1 92 1 

the boarding party, in the President's dream, a red 
bandanna around his neck, pistols in his belt, one 
leg astride the concrete ledge, hatred and lust of 
battle in his eye, there came surging and clamber- 
ing over that mole at the President that rare old 
buccaneer, Henry Cabot Lodge, with a cutlass in 
his teeth. 



Ill 



IN THE HALL OF MIRRORS 

{The Treaty of Peace with Germany was signed at Versailles on 
June 28 y igig) 

Paris, June 28. — Two red seals, covered care- 
fully with cotton batting, repose in a safe in the 
French Foreign Office to-night, technical proofs 
that the war is over, and that peace with Ger- 
many has been signed. They are the seals of the 
two German plenipotentiaries, Hermann Miiller 
and Johann Bell. 

Future antiquarians, turning over the pages of 
the Treaty of Versailles, will find them at the very 
close of that huge volume, also the seals and signa- 
tures of President Wilson, Premier Lloyd George, 
Premier Clemenceau and other Allied delegates. 

One of the two seals has some elaborate device, 
the other just plain initials, "J. B.," as though 
made with a small signet ring. There is nothing 
about them to show the reluctance with which 
they were affixed, nor is there anything in the sig- 
natures opposite to indicate the emotion under 
which they must have been written, unless it be 
the fact that the junior German plenipotentiary, 
evidently anxious to get it over as quickly as pos- 

21 



22 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 92 1 

sible, omitted his Christian name or initial, and 
simply set himself down in heavy upright script, 
^'Dr. Bell." 

After this fashion Germany signed the treaty oi 
Versailles in the Hall of Mirrors, swinging back the 
pendulum of history to France victorious. Until 
1870 the hall had remained a mighty monument to 
the power and pride of France since the days of 
Louis XIV. In 1871 Bismarck chose it to crown 
William I as Emperor of Germany, after the 
Crown Prince had written in his diary, "In con- 
templating this magnificent hall where so many sin- 
ister designs against Germany have taken form, 
and where the very paintings on the walls portray 
joy in her misfortune, I entertain the hope that 
it will be here they will celebrate the restoration of 
the Empire and Emperor." His hope was fulfilled 
on January 18, 1871, and to-day, not quite half a 
century later, by the irony of fate, the late empire 
and its emperor got their doom in the same spot. 

It was a very different setting, this of June 
28, 1919, symbolizing the transition from tradi- 
tions of imperialism to those of democracy. The 
frock coats of Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemen- 
ceau took the place of the resplendent uniforms 
of King William, Prince Charles, Prince Otto of 
Bavaria, Bismarck, Moltke, Blumenthal and 
Schleinitz. 

Where the Iron Chancellor towered above them 



IN THE HALL OF MIRRORS 23 

all as he read the proclamation which marked the 
consummation of his ambitions, theTiger of France 
to-day almost seemed to crouch as he sat watching 
with most dramatic in tenseness the German dele- 
gates putting their names to a treaty which 
marked the consummation of his desire. 

There was no official preacher on this occasion 
as there had been on that one. To-day's text lay 
across the face of Europe, and the sermon between 
the covers of the treaty. There was no military 
choir on hand to sing, as it did for Emperor Wil- 
liam, the 2 1 St Psalm, **The King shall joy in thy 
strength, O Lord . . . Thou settest a crown of 
pure gold on his head." Yet had there been such a 
choir it might well have sung parts of that very 
same Psalm, strangely prophetic of to-day: 

"Thine hand shall find out all thine enemies: 
thy right hand shall find out all those that hate 
thee. 

''Thou shalt make them as a fiery oven in the 
time of thine anger: the Lord shall swallow them 
up in his wrath, and the fire shall devour them. 

''Their fruit shalt thou destroy from the earth, 
and their seed from among the children of men. 

''For they intended evil against thee: they imagined 
a mischievous device which they were not able to 
perjormy 

There was no applause at all at to-day's cere- 
mony. The clicking of cameras took the place of 



24 DISPATCHES, 1919-1921 

the **Hochs" which, according to an eyewitness, 
Hatzfeldt, made the mirrors rattle when William 
was crowned. And there was almost as little color 
as there was sound — only the black, white and 
red full dress and the flashing sabres of the Re- 
publican Guard, the dun-colored turban of the 
Maharaja who signed for India, and the blue 
uniforms of the little group of wounded poilus, 
who, with fine sentiment, were given seats of 
honor. 

The ceremony itself didn't approach in melo- 
dramatic efl^ect the handing of the treaty to the 
German delegates on May 7, when Rantzau's 
knees failed him. There was plenty of dramatic 
interest in to-day's ceremony, but it lay rather in 
fact than in form, rather in memories conjured up 
by those mirrors and in the meaning squeezed 
into those two small seals than in any outward 
series of events. The whole thing, contrary to 
every prediction, took only forty-five minutes from 
the time Clemenceau, flinging out his gloved right 
hand to indicate the table on which the treaty lay, 
said, "I now have the honor to invite the delegates 
of Germany to sign," up to the moment when he 
arose again to declare the proceedings closed. 

There were no speeches except those of the 
French Premier. x'\t times the whole thing took on 
almost a casual air. While they were waiting for 
the German delegates to arrive, the Big Four 



IN THE HALL OF MIRRORS 25 

passed the time autographing each other's com- 
memorative programmes. 

As the last plenipotentiary put down his pen, 
cannons boomed outside and a great shouting 
arose in the gardens below and loud tooting of 
horns in the palace court. Then came the most 
spontaneous demonstration of the day, perhaps of 
the whole conference, since the President first 
arrived at Paris. Clemenceau, followed closely by 
the President and Lloyd George, walked down the 
great staircase and out on the terrace in the park 
below. A tremendous shout went up from the 
crowd in the park, who surged up close to the three 
chiefs of state and surrounded them with a dense 
mass of cheering men and women, for all the world 
like a crowd that breaks for a winning football 
team on the field. 

Rear-Admiral Grayson locked arms with secret 
service men and made a tiny ring around the three, 
barely large enough for them to walk in. Around 
this little ring the crowd sputtered and swirled 
like a spent pinwheel, and in the centre marched 
the three, arm in arm, Clemenceau in the middle, 
Wilson on his left and Lloyd George on his right. 
An automobile, some said it was Gen. Pershing's, 
finally came to their rescue. 



IV 



NEW YEAR'S EVE, 191 9 

{On November 79, /p/9, the Senate had refused to ratify the 

treaty^ the vote being JJ to jg in favor ^ but not the necessary two 

thirds) 

WASHiNGTONjDecemberji. — A year ago — just a 
year ago last night — Premier Clemenceau stood 
in the rostrum of the French Chamber of Depu- 
ties and said: 

*' There is an old system of alliances called the 
balance of power . . . This system of alliances 
... I do not renounce." 

And President Wilson, speaking at Manches- 
ter, England, the very same day, flung across the 
Channel this challenge; 

" If the future had nothing for. us but a new at- 
tempt to keep the world at a right poise by a bal- 
ance of power the United States would take no 
interest, because she will join in no combination of 
powers which is not a combination of all of us. 
She is not interested in the peace of Europe, but 
the peace of the world." 

Clemenceau went on to say that the President 
had expressed the hope that he might be able to 
persuade the French statesman to his point ot 

26 



NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1 91 9 ^7 

view. In a sense he did, but not just in the sense 
that the President probably had in mind. One of 
the most persistent bits of false legend that has 
sprung up about the Peace Conference is the idea 
that the League of Nations was woven into the 
fabric of the Peace Treaty to suit the sinister pride 
and purpose of the President in furtherance of 
his personal ambitions and Utopian dreams. 

Those who were there know and history will 
tell that there occurred during the Conference a 
most remarkable shift in the point of view of the 
Allied delegates toward the League, so that the 
League, at first a butt for cynics, came to be in the 
eyes of the conferees first a thing perhaps to be 
desired after all as an improvement on the old 
system, and then a matter of pressing necessity 
With Germany responsible to them for a genera- 
tion to come, they needed somebody to execute 
the terms of the Treaty, and with new nations 
added to the old, and all the old antipathies and 
hatreds ready to flaie up again among themselves 
in every one of a thousand controversies over 
boundaries and finance and racial minorities and 
coal and ports, they needed an umpire, with power 
to penalize officials, if necessary, for offside plays. 
With the treaty signed at Versailles and Presi- 
dent Wilson off for home on the George Washing- 
ton, the scene shifted to the United States. The 
debate in Congress started in earnest when the 



28 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 92 1 

treaty was reported out of the Committee on For- 
eign Relations on September 11. Senator Lodge, 
driven on by a desire to avenge what he regarded 
as an affront to the prestige of Congress, by a 
reluctance to see this country get into foreign 
entanglements, by a deep-seated hatred of Mr. 
Wilson, and by the urgings of partisan politics, 
saddled on the treaty the set of reservations that 
all the world knows. Sworn to defeat the treaty, 
if they could, stood the irreconcilables — on the one 
side Johnson, with that note of impassioned ear- 
nestness in his voice, and on the other Reed, with 
the gift of making the tiniest mole-hill look like an 
insuperable mountain, and of twisting the most 
far-fetched and inconsequential contingency into 
an impending cataclysm. 

Against this combination the friends of the 
treaty have so far striven in vain. President Wil- 
son's tour of the country in the interest of the 
League had great educational value to the coun- 
try, but little appreciable effect, it is now generally 
admitted, on the situation in the Senate, and even 
its educational value was to some extent marred 
by the fact that it came too late. 

The time when facts and information and inter- 
pretation are of supreme value is before people 
have made up their minds on a thing. By the 
time the Administration, which took no trouble to 
get the facts before the world at Paris, had made 



NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1 919 29 

up its mind to dispense some of them, the public 
had already made up its mind pretty much where 
it stood, on the insufficient data at hand, and 
simply seized whatever additional facts came its 
way from the rival speakers to reinforce judgments 
already formed. 

The ** liberals" had long since rejected the 
treaty as dross where they had been promised pure 
gold. The spirit of idealism, as Mr. Taft found, 
had run its course. Washington watched almost 
with fascination the gradual shift of the most 
vocal support of the League from the idealists to 
the materialists. Just as the League at Paris was 
first hailed by the "dreamers" and ultimately 
hugged to the bosoms of the practical politicians, 
so in this country it was first championed by the 
liberals, only to find a resting place in these latter 
days of tribulation in the lap of Wall Street, 
clamoring with enlightened self-interest for those 
processes of order in Europe which peace alone 
can set to work. 

For six months nearly this fruitless controversy 
has continued. The people are sick and tired of 
reading about the treaty, the correspondents are 
sick and tired of writing about it; only the Senators 
seem not to tire of talking about it. We who have 
been writing about it now every day almost since 
last April go through the habitual motions day 
after day in a sort of dazed and slavish monotony. 



30 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 92 1 

We know that we are writing rubbish, utter and 
unconscionable rubbish, about the talk Lenroot is 
going to have with Lodge, or the ultimatum the 
mild reservationists are going to send to the 
majority leader; about the "undercurrent of opti- 
mism" that crops up to the surface day after day; 
about compromise and no compromise, and so 
ad infinitum. It all signifies nothing, and we know 
that it signifies nothing, and we know that the 
country really doesn't give a whoop for all the 
controversy. What the country wants is that 
the Senate shall ratify the treaty and get it out of 
the way and quit turning the spotlight on Europe 
when there are so many dark spots over here to 
be illumined. 

Moreover, people here, outside of the stuffy 
atmosphere of the Senate at least, are coming to 
realize that, totally apart from the country's 
apathy, further controversy over forms of reserva- 
tions is in the main futile in itself. They are com- 
ing to see that the evil has been done, and that no 
mere form of ratification now practicable can undo 
it, and that the good has yet to be done, and that 
no mere form of ratification now contemplated 
can in any large measure impair it. 

The harm has been done, on the higher plane 
as on the lower. The professors of I>ouvain spoke 
for a disillusioned Europe when they said, **It 
is hard to understand how the great Power which 



NEW YEAR'S EVE, 191 9 31 

has contributed so much to victory can think of 
compromising the great results that victory ob- 
tained." We may still ratify, in all probability we 
shall still ratify, but ratification or no ratification, 
reservations or no reservations, Europe knows that 
America's mood is changed, for the time at least, 
and that she is not disposed now to enter into the 
concert of Powers with anything like that en- 
thusiasm which President Wilson promised, and 
which the Covenant in its unamended form em- 
bodied. Eventually she may, but not now, and no 
contemplated form of words for a reservation to 
Article X can replace that faith that has gone 
out of it. 

The harm has been done. William James had a 
theory that action must follow volition immedi- 
ately, or that the will would be dissipated and a 
man's moral force be by so much debilitated. 
Assuredly, that is as true of nations as it is of in- 
dividuals. Friends of the League through those 
long early weeks hoped against hope that rati- 
fication of the treaty by the great Powers, includ- 
ing the United States, would follow quickly the 
deliberations at Versailles, and that the League 
would spring into existence with the blood of the 
world's hot will for peace pulsing through its 
veins. 

But that did not happen. There happened in- 
stead exactly what William James would have 



32 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 92 1 

predicted and exactly what the friends of the 
League did predict. The energy was dissipated. 
The nations of Europe started at once to fall back 
into their old ways. The prestige of the Supreme 
Council at Paris sank rapidly and was openly 
defied by Rumania. D'Annunzio seized Fiume 
and as much as thumbed his nose at the world. 
Germany, seeing unity among the Allies at least 
on the surface seem to be ebbing, decided to defy 
them and to hold up her ratification of the treaty. 
Twenty or thirty armies go on fighting in different 
parts of Europe. The old intrigues start all over 
again and a sinister ''big brother" movement 
threatens to sweep over Europe in the place of a 
family of nations. Most of this, at least so the 
friends of the League are faithful enough to be- 
lieve, could have been avoided had the League 
been under way six months ago. 

But if the harm has already been done — and 
numerous other examples could be adduced to 
prove it, notably in the economic field, where 
eminent authorities here at Washington hold that 
never again will there be such an opportunity to 
float European loans advantageously in this 
country as there would have been in the past 
months, had peace been declared — but if the harm 
has been done, it is no less true, as friends of the 
League, at least outside of Congress, see it to-day, 
that the good is yet to be done, and that no reason- 



NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1 91 9 33 

able form of reservations at this date can affect 
the result much one way or the other. 

If the League is to be born a somewhat sickly 
infant, as now appears inevitable, life must be 
breathed into the infant. But by no conceivable 
stretch of the imagination, or of medical or social 
science, can life be breathed into the League of 
Nations by providing for withdrawal from the 
League by joint resolution instead of concurrent 
resolution, or by changing the "unless" to "until" 
in the last clause of the Article X Reservation, as 
Senator Hitchcock wants, among other things. 
The only way to give the new-born infant a chance 
to live is to quit worrying, give him the traditional 
slap on the back, and send him out into the 

world. 

Ratification is what all but the stubborn folk on 
both sides of the house see is needed now, not 
merely because the country is sick and tired of 
the controversy, not even merely because Europe 
stands in dire need of it, but because unless this 
League gets started pretty soon it might just as 
well have been stillborn for all the use it will ever 
be. There are not many people here in Washing- 
ton who follow European affairs very closely these 
days, but some of them do, and five minutes' con- 
versation with any one of them will reveal their 
apprehension. 

Intrigue in Austria and Poland; burning hos- 



34 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 92 1 

tility along the Adriatic; Turkey in what Winston 
Churchill calls a state of "quasi-dissolution"; 
Vienna literally starving; Russia — I know it is 
taboo to speak of Russia — Russia cold and hungry 
and distraught; all Europe faced with an economic 
crisis — no wonder that the professors of Lou vain 
appeal to America and that Lloyd George follows 
suit and that the Temps hastens to assure us that 
Great Britain will accept all the reservations except 
the preamble, and France preamble and all. 

No wonder, either, that the friends of the 
Treaty one meets here are exasperated with the 
Democrats for their stubbornness, for it is becom- 
ing more clear every day that the way to benefit 
the League is to get the treaty ratified, and then 
to concentrate on the League. Give Article X and 
Article XI and Article XII and every other 
article of the Covenant a chance to show what it 
means, to be construed in acts and not on paper. 
Get the League established at Geneva and build 
up about it all the processes of international rela- 
tions; not the spectacular ones merely, such as 
the machinery to prevent wars and settle disputes, 
but the every-day commonplace ones — the Red 
Cross, the Labor Bureau, the International 
Chamber of Commerce, the various other interna- 
tional agencies that are to be the real substance 
and life of the League from day to day, vigorous 
in the cultivation of that international goodwill 



NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1 91 9 35 

on which alone any successful League must 
grow. 

That is why friends of the League feel such keen 
regret that the first Labor Conference under the 
League got such a shabby reception here in Wash- 
ington a few weeks ago. That probably did at 
least as much harm to the cause of world peace 
as many a truculent turn of speech in the Lodge 
reservations. 

So the New Year finds the Capital not antici- 
pating that the country is inclined just now to 
assume world .responsibility in the widest sense. 
Eventually, friends of the League hope, with 
another set of leaders, and after we have had a rest 
from the war, the United States will see more 
clearly her obligations and opportunities. In the 
meanwhile, and as soon as the treaty is out of the 
way, the League's friends intend to work every- 
where to build it up, slowly, painstakingly, to 
the position they hoped it would hold from the 
start. In the A. E. F. officers used to have im- 
pressed upon them the importance of cultivating 
in the men under them **the will to use the bay- 
onet." Adapting that idea to the international 
situation, the job for the liberals everywhere 
during the coming years is to cultivate in the 
nations of the world the will to use the League. 



V 



AL SMITH AT SAN FRANCISCO 

(/// the Democratic National Convention of ig20, Gov. Smith 
was New York's candidate for the presidency) 

San Francisco, July i. — Al Smith, Governor of 
New York, got a demonstration in the Democratic 
National Convention here to-night that would 
warm the cockles of the most hard-boiled heart. 
He was not there to see it, unfortunately. Deli- 
cacy kept him out of the convention hall while his 
name was being put in nomination. But his friends 
will tell him about it, and he will tell his children 
about it, and it will be something for them to 
treasure — perhaps more than that, something that 
this country, when it worries about the gulf be- 
tween classes, will do well not to forget. 

It was altogether the most spontaneous demon- 
stration at this convention so far, or on the floor 
of the Chicago convention for that matter. There 
was no artifice about it, no stimulus of spotlight or 
cheer leaders. 

** We have hired no bands, we have brought with 
us no shouters and no boosters," as Mrs. Sire said 
in her seconding speech, much to the satisfaction 
of a body of delegates wearied by trumpet blares 

^6 



Cy- 



AL SMITH AT SAN FRANCISCO 21 

and professional marching clubs and tooting 
through megaphones. 

It all started with Bourke Cockran's nominating 
speech. There are qualities which Cockran may 
lack, but among them is not the gift of oratory, and 
Al Smith's career is not unresponsive to the Ameri- 
can political orator. Here was a candidate for the 
Presidency whose background was not the pro- 
verbial log cabin, but the pushcart. It was a 
theme perhaps unique among nominating speeches, 
and Cockran made the most of it. He told how Al 
Smith had been born and brought up on the Bow- 
ery, or^ust around the corner from it; how he had 
been forced to leave school before his education 
was completed to work for a living, how he had 
gone to the State Assembly and become its 
Speaker, how he had been chosen to a constitu- 
tional convention where he had a chance to match 
wits against men like Root, Stimson and Wicker- 
sham, and how finally he had been elected Gov- 
ernor on a Democratic raft floating on a Republi- 
can tidal wave two years ago. 

"He has never lost a friend, and never ceased 
to make new ones," the speaker remarked. ''All 
of them, from his playmates on the sidewalks of the 
East Side to the statesmen he has moved among 
as Governor call him *A1 Smith.' 

*'I venture to say he is the only man who could 
be called by such a diminutive without in any way 



38 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 92 1 

debasing the dignity of so high an office. Al Smith 
is in no way different from the rest of us, and that 
is why we love him." 

Cockran added this bit of significant comment 
on the Governor's career. He averred that the 
'* forces of anarchy" were stalking through the 
land and gave it as his judgment that they were to 
be met succesfully "not so much by clubbing as 
by conversion." The story of Al Smith's rise 
from the humblest to the most exalted station, he 
argued, would be "a living refutation of the 
Socialists' argument that the poor man, the under 
dog, has no chance in our regime." 

It was a timely argument in behalf of Smith as 
a candidate for the Presidency. Then came a 
masterly touch. As Cochran reached his perora- 
tion, with a wave of his hand toward the chromo 
of Woodrow Wilson behind him on the platform 
and a eulogy of the man he was nominating to 
succeed him, the band in the gallery struck up. 
And it struck up not the air of ''Tammany" that 
everybody had expected, but a tune whose com- 
plete and satisfying appropriateness the whole 
audience was quick to respond to, ''The Side- 
walks of New York": 

East Side^ West Side^ 
All about the town^ 
Boys and girls together — " 



AL SMITH AT SAN FRANCISCO 39 

Before the band had got through three lines of 
it the crowd caught the significance of the words, 
as embodying perfectly the Smith nomination, and 
caught the lilt of the music, and the demonstration 
began. Some of the Illinois and Pennsylvania dele- 
gates crossed the aisle to where Morgan J. O'Brien 
was sitting in the heart of the New York delega- 
tion with State Chairman Farley and Chief Mur- 
phy, and volunteered to get out their standards 
and parade. But there had been no demonstration 
planned, and the New Yorkers demurred. 

**I told them I thought it would fall flat," 
Judge O'Brien said afterward. **We had no 
thought of any such demonstration." 

But what with Cockran's speech and the music 
and the appeal of Al Smith's personality there was 
no stopping it. The New York standard, survivor 
of the tussle two days ago between Roosevelt and 
Mahoney in the Wilson demonstration, was soon 
in the aisle, and before five minutes were up the 
Illinois and Pennsylvania standards were dipping 
down the aisle after it, and the Ohio standard, and 
then, one by one, almost all the rest, until the 
whole convention hall was a sea of tossing stand- 
ards, with only here and there a State holding 
aloof. 

Just what States joined or did not join and just 
how long the thing lasted your correspondent has 
no means of knowing. By the time the band had 



40 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 92 1 

swung through ''Sweet Rosie O'Grady" and ''The 
Bowery, the Bowery, You See Such Things and 
You Hear Such Things, on the Bowery, the 
Bowery,'' and back again into "Boys and Girls 
Together," he had so far forgotten that judicial 
poise and judicious aloofness which, of course, 
should ever be the attributes of all good reporters 
that he had joined in the procession himself. 

There was no great volume of noise about it — 
that was left to the megaphone demonstrations 
of the other candidates. It was just a spontaneous 
generous tribute, men and women delegates swing- 
ing slowly down the aisles arm in arm, under such 
a tossing of standards as no other candidate 
brought forth, singing not "Hail, Hail, the Gang's 
All Here" or "California" or the halting candi- 
date-songs of Pennsylvania or Ohio, but strains 
familiar to Fourteenth Street and below a genera- 
tion ago, "Sweet Rosie O'Grady," "The Bowery" 
and "After the Ball Is Over." It was not the 
mood of a political demonstration at all. Every- 
body there knew that Al Smith didn't have a 
Shantung chance of getting nominated. It was 
much more the atmosphere of a crowd on a Paris 
boulevard out to do honor to some local hero. 

Another unwitting touch of psychological genius 
came when Franklin Roosevelt took the rostrum 
to second the nomination of the Governor. Here 
was a man who, according to the ordinary stand- 



AL SMITH AT SAN FRANCISCO 41 

ards of the world, was the very antithesis of Al 
Smith — a man of wealth, a man of family, a man 
of social position and college breeding, a man who 
had succeeded in public life in spite of his riches 
where Al Smith had succeeded in spite of his 
poverty. "Our own Al Smith " that he spoke about 
seemed an almost uncouth phrase on his lips. The 
dramatic contrast of the thing fairly leaped at the 
audience. Roosevelt has none of the oratorical 
arts of Cockran, but he has much, very much, that 
Cockran will never have if he attends conventions 
until he is a hundred, and the plain sincerity of his 
few remarks about his respect and admiration for 
the Governor was all that was needed to make his 
speech effective. 

The demonstration was perhaps not all for 
Smith. Some of the enthusiasm was doubtless 
due to the popularity of Cockran, a prodigal long 
absent from Democratic love feasts, whom his 
fellow delegates were glad to welcome home, and 
if there was any stimulation to the celebration at 
all it was that which might arise out of a desire 
on the part of other delegations with axes to grind 
to ingratiate themselves with Tammany, in the 
hope that the favor might be returned when the 
balloting begins. But these two factors plainly 
played but a comparatively inconspicuous part in 
the affair. In the main, it was a rare tribute to 
Al Smith himself, and to the kind of an American 



42 DISPATCHES, 191 9-1 921 

career that he stands for, carrying with it a doubly 
rare and gratifying sense of atonement between 
classes supposed to be cleaving so wide apart in 
these latter days. 

There is much talk of "Americanism." Un- 
fortunately the word is commonly so slimed about 
with cant and hypocrisy that it has fallen into low 
estate. Your correspondent has yet to encounter 
an event with a surer pulse of true Americanism 
than this demonstration for Al Smith to-night. 



VI 
PRESIDENT HARDING'S INAUGURAL 

{This is one of those dispatches which are sometimes scorned as 
''fakes'' The exigencies of the occasion required that it be 
written the night before, with a paragraph or two inserted later) 

Washington, March 4.— Warren Gamaliel 
Harding of Ohio was sworn in at noon to-day as 
twenty-eighth President of the United States. A 
great crowd watched the ceremony in front of the 
Capitol and heard President Harding's inaugural 
address. 

Mr. Harding declared that the United States, 
under the new Administration, would be ready to 
associate itself with the nations of the world for 
conference and counsel, to relieve the burdens of 
armament, and to cooperate in all the judicial 
processes of peacemaking; but, he added, " a world 
super-government is contrary to everything we 
cherish and can have no sanction by our republic." 
As the incoming Administration sees it, the coun- 
try's "supreme task is the resumption of our 
onward, normal way." 

The speech was the pledge of a return to good, 
homey, old-fashioned peace, happiness, and pros- 
perity— the kind that mother used to make. Those 

43 



44 DISPATCHES, 1919-1921 

who listened to it with any hopes that it would 
reveal a detailed programme, or even anything 
more clarifying than the President's campaign and 
Marion utterances, went away in a measure disap- 
pointed. They discovered that the President still 
allowed his thought to be cloaked in a mantle of 
somewhat woolly words, and many must have felt 
that his plea for Americanism, sincere and heart- 
felt as were his words, tapped but the shoals of the 
country's aspirations. 

The weather man made good on his predictions 
and Inauguration Day broke clear and cold, with a 
wind whistling down Pennsylvania Avenue such as 
Utica or Albany might envy on a bright winter's 
day. 

It was such a day as would fulfil the heart's 
desire of any President bound to the Capitol to 
take the oath of office and speak his inaugural ad- 
dress. Down below the White House the Wash- 
ington monument stood up white and distinct, 
casting a clear shadow, for all the world like some 
giant sun-dial. The sky was clear blue, with a few 
puffy clouds in it, such as are most frequently to 
be seen on the picture post-cards of the capital 
which visitors send back to the home folks. 



When President Harding turned toward the 
great crowd to read his inaugural address it was as 



PRESIDENT HARDING'S INAUGURAL 45 

if with a surge of understanding there came to 
all within sight of the speaker and sound of his 
voice a sudden reahzation of the immense and in- 
scrutable destinies that hung over him. The elec- 
trical device which magnified his voice and carried 
the slowly delivered sentences of his address with 
a queer metallic ring clear across the broad espla- 
nade almost to the fringe of the crowd on the steps 
of the Congressional Library was but the emblem 
of a more compelling force, his hearers knew, which 
made his words reverberate around the world. 
They were visibly aware that what this man on 
this day pledged, and what he from this day forth 
does to carry out those pledges, might spell the 
history of the next generation. 

It was borne in upon his listeners even as Mr. 
Harding stepped forward to take the oath at the 
familiar hands of the Chief Justice, and before the 
crowd had had a chance to hear a word from his 
lips, how immeasurable was the contrast between 
this occasion and that day eight years ago when 
Woodrow Wilson read from this same rostrum his 
first inaugural. This contrast lay not so much in 
the staging of the ceremony, noticeable as was the 
absence to-day of the vast platform which then 
occupied half the plaza and provided row after 
row of seats for diplomats, officials, and guests, as 
in the whole purport and significance of the event. 
Wilson in 191J and Harding in 1921, side by side 



46 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 92 1 

though they drove to the Capitol to-day, were al- 
most the spokesmen of two different eras. 

Wilson in 1913 voiced the aspirations of pro- 
tracted peace. When his countrymen thought of 
war they thought of the Civil War, and no longer 
of that war with any present purpose. The 
Spanish War had hardly swerved the set of the 
country's deeper tides, though it had added Roose- 
velt to the list of war-made or war-trained Presi- 
dents since Lincoln: Grant, Hayes, Garfield, 
Arthur, Harrison, and McKinley. The issues of 
the Civil War and of the reconstruction days had 
died with our fathers, and the new generation 
sought a new dispensation, which Roosevelt 
claimed for a new party, Wilson for the ''new 
freedom." 

*'No one can mistake the purpose for which the 
nation now seeks to use the Democratic party," 
Mr. Wilson declared from these very Capitol steps 
eight years ago. "It seeks to use it to interpret a 
change in its own plans and its own point of view. 
. . . We have been refreshed by a new insight 
into our own life." 

There was not a man or woman in all that as- 
sembled multitude to-day who had to wait for 
Harding's words to learn how different is the tem- 
per of the country and of its spokesman in 1921. 
They had good cause to know that the country 
had again, in the span of a single ^Administration, 



PRESIDENT HARDING'S INAUGURAL 47 

been drenched in war. The headlines in this 
morning^s newspapers telling the tale of the still 
unrealized ambitions of the Allies for a settlement 
were there to remind them that though hostilities 
ceased sixteen months ago there is no perfected 
peace yet in Europe. And with the whole problem 
of reconstruction at home still awaiting a leader 
and a programme, no one present on this occasion 
could wonder that the new Administration should 
voice the desire of the people to be led safely to a 
sure and speedy peace which should, while recog- 
nizing our international obligations, permit this 
country to live its own life, as free as possible from 
the danger of "involvement" in disputes with 
which it is not immediately concerned. 

Earlier in the course of the day's ceremonies 
this contrast between 1921 and 1913 had been 
drawn vividly. The hour was noon — by the 
Senate clock, which is obedient to the legislative 
will rather than to the sun — and the scene the 
Senate Chamber, where the two houses of Con- 
gress, the Justices of the Supreme Court, the mem- 
bers of the Diplomatic Corps, the retiring Cabinet 
and their guests had assembled to see the Vice- 
President sworn in. 

As the spectators in the galleries looked down on 
the packed hall it was as if the history of the 
past full year lay clear before them., as on the white 
table of a camera obscura — the "rival govern- 



48 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 92 1 

ments" in White House and Capitol, the long 
treaty fight, the waxing authority of the legislative 
branch, the nomination of one of these Senators for 
President. There, too, spread before your eyes, 
were the makings of history for a generation to 
come. You got an uncanny feeling that the actors 
in this stupendous drama had merely taken ad- 
vantage of an entr'acte to crowd around their new 
actor-manager. 

There were Johnson and Borah, the marplots; 
Reed, cast say for the leading role in ''Paradise 
Lost"; Lodge, whose part had been, according to 
each spectator's own interpretation of that slim 
figure's consummate bit of acting, either to save 
America's soul or to blast the hope of the world. 

Watching the little group of men that followed 
the Diplomatic Corps into the chamber, it was but 
natural to speculate on another side of the same 
picture. Here was the Cabinet of the outgoing 
Administration, as roundly belabored a bodyguard 
as every surrounded a President. Who were to 
take their places? 

Houston there, the thickset man with the com- 
petent eye, had been President Wilson's latest 
Secretary of the Treasury, to be succeeded by 
Andrew W. Mellon. Would it have been con- 
ceivable eight years ago that any incoming Ad- 
ministration would have named for this post, no 
matter what his merits, one of the two or three 



PRESIDENT HARDING'S INAUGURAL 49 

richest men in x^merica, prominently identified 
with "big business"? Or take Alexander, the 
least known member of the outgoing Cabinet, head 
of a department which figures rarely in the news 
except in census years. Yet such is the emphasis 
these days on trade and the laying down of a 
broad economic programme, international as well 
as national, that Harding has named as that n- 
familiar figure's successor the best known man in 
public life the world over — Hoover. 

Colby headed the Cabinet delegation— a man 
whose nomination for the American Premiership 
was bitterly resented when first news of it reached 
this very Senate chamber. His policies as Secre- 
tary of State had since found unexpectedly wide 
acceptance there because of his vigorous assertion 
of American rights in Mexico, Mesopotamia, and 
Yap. It was impossible not to wonder what for- 
tune would befall his eminent successor, Mr. 
Hughes, when and if he crosses swords here in the 
Capitol with the intrenched determination of the 
Foreign Relations Committee. 

It was equally impossible to look down on those 
men gathered there in that Senate chamber with- 
out wondering what the next act of the drama 
would reveal. For months they had been divided 
into two rival camps. This impasse no longer 
blocks progress. There is harmony again, at least 
on the surface, between executive and legislative, 



50 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 921 

based on Mr. Harding's pledge that he will work 
hand in hand w^ith his old friends here, with '*no 
surrender at either end of the avenue." 

But what of Penrose, sitting over there, with his 
remark about it not making much difference who 
was the next Secretary of State, in the light of 
the fact that the Senate would "blaze the way" 
in the determination of foreign policy? x'\nd what 
of Borah, with the massive face and great head 
of hair, who declared only the other day that he 
would refuse to "abdicate his judgment" to any 
man in or out of the White House? Some observ- 
ers, moreover, noted, as they sat in that gallery 
to-day through the closing hours of the session 
which ended at legislative noon, that this Congress 
had there and then failed to comply with the Presi- 
dent-elect's first and only behest: not only to get 
the appropriations bills through, but to make the 
session count for something constructive beside. 

All these were but comparatively trivial aspects 
of the larger question that must have swayed the 
subconscious wonderings of all those present: Will 
the Harding Administration fulfill the measure of 
faith, or at least hope, so generously reposed in it 
by the people at the polls on November 2? If so, 
what will be what the new President might call 
the programme of fulfilment? Here again no 
sharper contrast could be drawn than this between 
1 92 1 and 1913. Then all men knew, if not the 



PRESIDENT HARDING'S INAUGURAL 51 

details of the programme, at least the definite 
thought and purpose of the new Administration. 
President Wilson had made them clear to the 
voters in the course of the campaign, and the only 
question in the minds of those who assembled for 
his inauguration was whether the party would 
hold fast to the pledges already given. 

But to-day the programme of the incoming 
Administration, as expressed in its underlying 
policies, domestic and foreign, is yet to be formu- 
lated. Even the prolonged consultation with the 
''best minds" failed to evolve a definite plan, and 
those who listened to President Harding's words 
to-day expecting to hear any specific and detailed 
commitment were doomed to disappointment. 
There have been such utterances in plenty as 
"America first," "A new association of nations," 
"No man ought to be greater than his party," 
and "The world and twentieth century civilization 
need nothing so much as understanding," which 
had given President Harding's hearers an indica- 
tion of what was in his mind even before he spoke 
his inaugural. But they will probably have to 
wait long weeks yet — until his first message to the 
new Congress at any rate — before that programme 
takes more definite shape. 

Those who stood patiently in the open plaza 
to-day listening to Mr. Harding got an impression 
of earnestness and sincerity which in a measure 



52 DISPATCHES, 1919-I921 

dispelled the sense of unreality and automatism 
created by the stentorian tones and metallic, un- 
human resonance of the loud-speaking apparatus. 
But Harding, as he goes to spend his first night in 
the White House, remains in a larger measure 
unknown to his countrymen, at least so far as his 
programme is concerned and his ability to carry it 
through. They know he is honest, they know that 
he is earnest, they know that he is humble, they 
know that he is passionately a patriot, they know 
that he proposes to turn loose in this country 
and in international relationships all the forces 
of conciliation, appeasement, and reintegration 
that he can make himself master of. But beyond 
that he remains unrevealed. 



VII 



HUGHES AT THE ARMS CONFERENCE 

{The Conference on the Limitation of Armaments assembled in 

Washington Saturday, November ii, 1921. This dispatch was 

written the previous Monday) 

Washington, November 5.— Three years have 
now rolled by since the armistice, and we are on 
the eve of another conference, with a new central 
figure. In Paris in the spring of 1919 the central 
figure was Woodrow Wilson, then at the pmnacle 
of his fame. Now it is Charles Evans Hughes, not 
yet fully emerged perhaps, but destined to emerge 
from the coming conference, I profoundly believe, 
as one of the commanding figures of his time. 

Men speak of his exaltation of spirit these days. 
I believe it, though perhaps the Secretary of State 
himself would not care to have the report credited. 
He has chosen rather to clothe his purposes in the 
cloak of realism. But there is such a thing as ex- 
altation of spirit which can refresh the idealism of 
a leader's purposes without impairing in one whit 
the realism of his method, and it is that exalta- 
tion which I believe fills Mr, Hughes to-day. 

Mr. Hughes has a fancy for the homely meta- 
phors of the card table. He knows games where the 

S2 



54 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 921 

players put all their cards on the table, and he 
knows games where you hold them close to your 
chin. He likes to talk of these two kinds and of 
their comparative merits, and you would think 
from his talk that he was an expert at them. I 
once heard him, in a most informal way — apropos 
of reparations or mandates or some other con- 
troversy in which the United States was involved 
at the time — characterize the general purpose of 
the United States as **a fair deal all around, with 
the United States sitting in for what it is entitled 
to." 

That is not the way Woodrow Wilson would 
have expressed it. Perhaps it could not safely be 
left to history as a formal expression of the coun- 
try's purposes. It would, for instance, give the 
impression of a group of men dividing up the 
spoils — an impression which was far from Mr. 
Hughes's mind, I am sure. Then, too, while re- 
flecting his lawyer's sense of a client's rights, the 
quotation falls short of a full expression of Mr. 
Hughes's own exalted purposes, which he has 
chosen — consciously, I believe — to keep always 
in the background. But it will do well enough as a 
rough-and-ready slogan of the Administration's 
attitude, and one perhaps peculiarly responsive to 
what seems to be the country's mood. Wilson 
hitched his wagon to a star. Hughes has chosen 
rather to hitch his star to a wagon. 



HUGHES AT THE ARMS CONFERENCE 55 

But the Star is there, I firmly believe. I believe 
while Mr. Hughes has chosen deliberately to talk 
about oil, and cables, and armaments, he has been 
thinking of international law, and international 
tribunals, and international cooperation, and 
international goodwill — yes, even of international 
association. Let those who will, smile at so ingen- 
uous a faith in the ulterior idealistic purposes of an 
avowed realist like Hughes. Only let the doubters 
remember what Lord NorthclifFe, who is no ingenu, 
wrote of Hughes when he was here: 

**The failures of others may have taught him 
that the surest way to attain a lofty end is not al- 
ways to proclaim its loftiness in advance. He may 
have learned that the presence of a spice of self- 
interest, national or individual, is often helpful in 
persuading men of worth and of ethical principles. 
Hence, perchance, his insistence upon the interests 
of the United States as the main concern of Mr. 
Harding's Administration. When the full cata- 
logue of those 'interests' comes to be made up, 
there may be found among them such matters as 
the promotion of goodwill among nations, the 
assurance of peace on the Pacific and the elimina- 
tion of armaments among the powers chiefly 'in- 
terested.' " 

No man who sees Mr. Hughes from day to day, 
as the Washington correspondents do, can come 
away from those conferences without marvelling 



56 DISPATCHES, 1919-I921 

at the vigor of the man. I wonder what it is in 
him that enables him to radiate such energy and 
assurance. Is it golf? Is it prayer? Is it a con- 
sciousness of the rectitude of his own purposes 
and the conviction of their assured success? I 
do not know. Perhaps it is all four — with just "a 
dash of calculated policy thrown in. For confidence 
is contagious. 

Remember what he said in his address to the be- 
ginners in the consular service: "The man who 
succeeds in this work in any position where there 
are a great many burdens and demands is the man 
who can keep quiet and placid when there is very 
severe pressure, who can keep his head and intel- 
ligence at the same time giving the impression of a 
man adequate to the exigency'' It will be a shrewd 
correspondent who, if things ever go wrong in this 
conference, will be able to discern that fact in 
Hughes's face. 

Mr. Hughes goes into this conference a lone nov- 
ice among a score of the veteran diplomats of the 
world. "Veteran diplomats of the world" is a 
tame and hackneyed expression, and does not half 
do justice to the capacity and experience of some 
of the delegates. Men like Lloyd George and 
Briand can cut figure eights and grapevines all 
around any ordinary aggregation of "veteran dip- 
lomats." To drop Hughes down into the midst of 
that bunch would seem at first blush like throwing 



HUGHES AT THE ARMS CONFERENCE 57 

a child to the lions. But Hughes has the armor and 
weapons that may well prevail, even in such an 
arena. 

For one thing he has a consciousness of the 
soundness and justice of the American point of 
view. Hughes is not the kind of a man who is 
given to overmuch talking about the particularly 
unselfish purpose of his own nation. He admits 
that each nation has its own special interests, the 
United States no less than the rest. But he is 
profoundly convinced that the special interests of 
the United States at this particular juncture in the 
world's affairs represent in a very large degree the 
general interests of the world at large — the open 
door in China, the integrity of China, the elimina- 
tion of misunderstandings in the Pacific, the 
limitation of armament. 

Secondly, he has the weapon of his intellectual 
gifts. It is the habit here at the Capitol among 
some critics to deprecate the mental powers of the 
Secretary of State. They say his mentality only 
appears commanding because some of his associ- 
ates in the Administration are not men of outstand- 
ing brain power. I believe that is a fundamental 
misconception. For grasp, for analysis, for reason- 
ing power, and for facility and lucidity of expres- 
sion, I believe Mr. Hughes has not his peer in the 
public life of this country to-day. 

Lloyd George may be cleverer. Briand may be 



58 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 921 

subtler, but for forthright mentality and capacity, 
Hughes is unexcelled. I am not so sure about his 
ability at poker, in spite of his favorite metaphors, 
but if this is a chess game he is "sitting in," he 
can beat them all to a frazzle, for his is the kind of 
an intellect which thinks every move out in ad- 
vance. He has a grasp of facts so dynamic that it 
is constantly projecting itself over into future con- 
tingencies in such a way as to enable him to deal 
with the most unexpected eventually as though it 
had been anticipated from the start. 

If he has any shortcoming, it is a lack of imag- 
ination. I remember writing last March, after 
watching him at work for only a couple of weeks, 
**The new Administration in the State Depart- 
ment is perhaps more sure-footed than imagina- 
tive," and I think that judgment has come to be 
shared by many, even of Mr. Hughes's greatest 
admirers. Partly, this is a want of finesse, due to his 
lack of diplomatic training and experience. But I 
cannot help feeling that it is something more than 
that — the lack of some quality of intuition, a tend- 
ency to rely, perhaps too much, on the processes 
of abstract reasoning and too little on that intui- 
tion which is often a surer guide. 

His Mexican policy has been criticised, for in- 
stance, on the grounds that there was too much 
bald logic about it, and too little understanding. 
Other instances could be cited. It is my own per- 



HUGHES AT THE ARMS CONFERENCE 59 

sonal judgment that the frame of mind in which 
the Administration seems to be greeting the 
incoming delegates — saying to them in effect, 
"you sit down and come to an agreement with us 
in this matter of armament or we will build a navy 
big enough to blow you out of the Seven Seas" — 
is realism gone mad. 

This may be a weakness, but it is not necessarily 
a vital one. It can be balanced by Mr. Hughes's 
strength of character, his extraordinary power of 
analysis, his broad tolerance of the other fellow's 
point of view, and his political talents, which, 
apart from this single angle, are of no mean order. 
With consummate skill he has steered the foreign 
policy of the United States in such a course that 
while the strongest partisans of the League of 
Nations, on the one hand, and the irreconcilables, 
on the other, may be alike dissatisfied, in the main 
he has the whole country behind him and the na- 
tions of the world ready to cooperate with him. 



VIII 

FRANCE AT THE ARMS CONFERENCE 

{Premier Briand made his great speech at a plenary session on 

Monday^ Nove?nber 21^ ig2l. This dispatch was written the 

following Saturday) 

Washington, November 26. — This has been 
France's week at the conference. A frank state- 
ment of the point of view of a country is always 
helpful to an ultimate understanding, as both Mr. 
Hughes and Mr. Balfour pointed out, and to that 
extent M. Briand's utterances have doubtless 
given the country a fresh view of the situation and 
policy of France, which was to be desired. But 
observers at Washington did not have to wait to 
read Lord Curzon's speech to realize that many 
misgivings had been aroused by all that Briand 
said and did while he was here, and perhaps still 
more by what he did not say and did not do. 
In fact, after all that has taken place, one may well 
wonder whether Secretary Hughes does not now 
wish that he had taken Senator Borah's advice 
and left land armaments out of the agenda and 
Briand at home. 

M. Briand's speech on Monday and subsequent 
outgivings have doubtless been a highly effective 

60 



FRANCE AT THE ARMS CONFERENCE 6i 

display advertisement for his country. More than 
that, they may have refreshed— indeed, they did 
refresh— the memories of the great sacrifices 
France made in the war for the cause of civiliza- 
tion. They may well have evoked genuine sympa- 
thy for France, truly beset as she is, and, beyond 
that, "haunted"— the word is Balfour's and sig- 
nificant as describing fears with a touch of un- 
reality about them — by terrors across the Rhine. 
Then, too, the speech may have helped Briand po- 
litically at home. 

It did not, however, in the judgment at least of 
those who agree with Lord Curzon, make more 
secure the position of France. Certainly it did not 
strengthen the entente cordiale between France and 
Great Britain. It did not enhance in prestige 
France's international position. And over and 
above all that, it most assuredly did not set the 
cause for which the nations are gathered together 
here forward so much as by an inch. On the con- 
trary, it confused, and it will be fortunate if it 
does not confound, the whole course of the 
present negotiations. 

"Why could not France have cooperated in this 
conference instead of making it a scene of special 
pleading?" asks H. G. Wells. In so doing he 
voices the prevailing criticism of M. Briand's 
utterances that is heard in the capital. In all that 
he said and did he virtually ignored the conference 



62 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 921 

save as a rostrum for his defence of France and 
French policy. In his first brief speech answering 
Hughes there were only a few generalizations. In 
his great speech on Monday there was not a single 
reference to either of the two great purposes for 
which the conference had been called — limitation 
of naval armaments and a solution of the problems 
of the Far East. In his speech at the Lotos Club 
on Thursday he again appeared as a special 
pleader for France and made no reference to the 
major purposes of the conference in which he had 
been invited to participate. It was a week of 
special pleading. There was not so much as a 
"helpful hint" for the Hughes programme, m^uch 
less any constructive contribution to the work of 
the conference. 

It is easy enough to list detailed criticisms of the 
speech which have been prevalent here at the 
capital during the past week — the mistake in 
emphasis which led the speaker to make little of 
the very definite curtailment of armament that 
France is busy effecting; the long quotations from 
Ludendorff which informed American opinion is 
far from believing represents the prevailing temper 
in Germany to-day; the poor taste of his casual 
sarcasm about the capital ships being designed, 
he supposed, to go fishing for sardines; the talk 
about the Russian military menace, regarded here 
as illusory; the folly of the policy of isola- 



FRANCE AT THE ARMS CONFERENCE 6^ 

tion, which Lord Curzon at least attributes to 
him. 

Such criticisms, however, do not touch upon the 
hurt he has done the conference itself, which is 
something far subtler. This conference was called 
in a spirit of amity and cooperation. Its atmos- 
phere is one of goodwill. Its purpose is reconcilia- 
tion among the nations. The faces of Hughes and 
Balfour and even of Kato are set forward and not 
back. 

Into this gathering Briand comes with a dis- 
cordant note. Recalling the war-time sacrifices of 
France and the story of Verdun, he at the same 
time revives all the old war hatreds and war ani- 
mosities. He speaks of harboring no hate for 
Germany — and indeed the Government of which 
he is the head has done something in the way of 
putting into effect a policy of moderation — and at 
the same time he draws a picture of Germany as 
full of the menace of militarism, and so fills out 
the picture as to leave his hearers in a mood the 
very opposite of that which would be characterized 
by the goodwill of which he spoke. He reads long 
quotations from Ludendorff, long discredited, and 
informally appears to hint that the British naval 
programme is being directed against France. All 
of this hardly makes for reconciliation. It is as 
though some one at a party had turned on the 
phonograph record of a dead man's voice. 



64 DISPATCHES, 1 91 9-1 92 1 

Secretary Hughes, it will be conceded, is a mas- 
ter of analysis. Those who have heard him day by 
day explain the foreign policies of this country 
know that he is also a master of the English 
language, and that the words he wants lie always 
ready to his tongue. His reply to M. Briand, in 
the judgment of those who heard it, will be long 
remembered, especially the ringing phrase: ** There 
is no moral isolation for the defenders of liberty 
and justice." That speech of Mr. Hughes was 
notable for what it did not say as well as for what 
it did say, however, and perhaps particularly for 
his description of M. Briand's speech. 

"It would not do justice to my own sentiment 
or to that of my colleagues of the American delega- 
tion," he began, "if I did not take part in this 
expression of the sense of privilege which has been 
felt in listening to this brilliant, eloquent, compre-. 
hensive, and instructive address stating the posi- 
tion and policy of France.". 

Those adjectives describe the speech with the 
utmost precision. It was just that — "brilliant, elo- 
quent, comprehensive, and instructive" — and, 
from the point of view of the conference, not one 
atom more. 



